Hormone Levels Plays Role on Developing Breast Cancer

According to new research published in the British Journal of Cancer, weight strongly affects the sex hormones that increase breast cancer risk for post-menopausal women.

Dr. Gillian Reeves from the University of Oxford in the UK and colleagues, all members of the Endogenous Hormones and Breast Cancer Collaborative Group say if one drink alcohol and follows it with cigarette smoking. It will seriously affect the hormone levels.

Reeve claims that their study show that changes in hormone levels is going to explain the link between obesity with breast cancer.

Reeve takes note of more than just suggests weight and alcohol of being strong influence for hormone levels. They have also dived deep into the development of breast cancer.

Inside the women’s body, there is the ovary which creates sex hormone.

Those women who have the highest levels of oestrogen and related hormones have twice the risk of having breast cancer. If one think, that breast cancer does not concerns men, think again. Breast cancer can also occur, but it rarely happens.

For the research, Reeves, together with her colleagues gathered data from around 6,300 post menopausal women who took part in 13 different studies so that they could examine the levels of sex hormone affects the risk of developing breast cancer.

They found out that there are several factors that contribute to rise in the level of sex hormone. The factor that gave rise to sex hormone levels is age, menopause, BMI (body mass index), smoking, alcohol and reproductive factors, such as age at menarche.

When they found out that BMI had the strongest influence on sex hormone levels, and on oestrogen in particular, they concluded that this must have been the reason obese women often develops breast cancer.

Those women, who drank more than 20g alcohol per day, had among the highest level of all the hormones they examined. This is an acceptable explanation why an alcohol drinker has a high risk of developing breast cancer.

The research teams also found out why women, who consumes 15 or more cigarettes in one day, had a fairly high hormone compared to those who never smoked.

Sex hormone concentrations were deeply connected with numerous established or suspected risk factors for breast cancer, and may affect the risk factors for developing breast cancer.

Dr. Julie Sharp, senior science information manager at Cancer Research UK, say that although are evidence of connections between weight, alcohol and the risk of developing breast cancer. People also need to understand why the diseases are there in the first place. The study plays a pivotal role on showing how alcohol and weight work together with hormone levels to influence the risk.